self driving Articles, Stories & News

Companies recognize that maintaining a safe work environment is just as important as increasing productivity. It's maximizing the safety and efficiency of a facility that matters most, and SDVs are a tool both manufacturers and warehouses can use to makes this possible

Tom Simonite for MIT Technology Review: Brevan Jorgenson’s grandma kept her cool when he took her for a nighttime spin in the Honda Civic he’s modified to drive itself on the highway. A homemade device in place of the rear-view mirror can control the brakes, accelerator, and steering, and it uses a camera to identify road markings and other cars.
“She wasn’t really flabbergasted—I think because she’s seen so much from technology by now,” says Jorgenson, a senior at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Others are more wary of the system, which he built using plans and software downloaded from the Internet, plus about $700 in parts. Jorgenson says the fact that he closely supervises his homebrew autopilot hasn’t convinced his girlfriend to trust the gadget’s driving. “She’s worried it’s going to crash the car,” he says. Cont'd...

From comma.ai: Last week, we open sourced an advanced driver assistance system in order to help accelerate the future of self driving cars and provide a platform anyone can build on top of. We released both openpilot, driving agent research software, and NEO, a robotics platform capable of running openpilot, under the MIT license.
openpilot is an open source adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist system, both safety features available on modern cars. We would like to build the best ones on the market, and help you retrofit them to existing cars.
NEO is an open source robotics research platform. It is centered around an Android phone, similar to Android Based Robots. The modern smartphone is an incredible platform packed with sensors and processing power. NEO also includes a cooling solution and a CAN interface board. CAN is a networking protocol used in cars, trucks, power wheelchairs, golf carts, and many other robotics applications.
With a forthcoming openpilot release, it will become easier for researchers to add support for their own vehicle. On older cars, some actuators may be harder to control than others, but it should be very possible to control the gas electronically to have a gas only adaptive cruise control. It's also possible for researchers to add mechanical actuators for the controls that cannot be electronically actuated.
Have fun, be safe, and let's usher in the future of self driving cars together... (Github repo) (Interview)

The world's leading driverless technology conference, AutoSens (http://www.auto-sens.com), has teamed up with British start-up Self Driving Track Days (http://www.selfdrivingtrackdays.com) to deliver industry-backed test-track events and training workshops for students, SMEs, engineers and technologists wanting to learn about autonomous vehicles.

Jane Wakefield for BBC News: A self-drive electric delivery van, that could be on UK streets next year, has been unveiled at the Wired 2016 conference in London.
The vehicle's stripped-back design and lightweight materials mean it can be assembled by one person in four hours, the firm behind it claims.
The vehicles will be "autonomous-ready", for when self-drive legislation is in place, the firm said.
The government wants to see self-drive cars on the roads by 2020.
"We find trucks today totally unacceptable. Loud, polluting and unfriendly," said Denis Sverdlov, chief executive of Charge, the automotive technology firm behind the truck.
"We are making trucks the way they should be - affordable, elegant, quiet, clean and safe." Cont'd...

Yuri Kageyama for News Factor: The U.S. robotics expert tapped to head Toyota's Silicon Valley research company says the $1 billion investment by the giant Japanese automaker will start showing results within five years.
Gill Pratt [pictured above] told reporters that the Toyota Research Institute is also looking ahead into the distant future when there will be cars that anyone, including children and the elderly, can ride in on their own, as well as robots that help out in homes.
Pratt, a former program manager at the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, joined Toyota Motor Corp. first as a technical adviser when it set up its artificial intelligence research effort at Stanford University and MIT.
He said safety features will be the first types of AI applications to appear in Toyota vehicles. Such features are already offered on some models now being sold, such as sensors that help cars brake or warn drivers before a possible crash, and cars that drive themselves automatically into parking spaces or on certain roads.
"I expect something to come out during those five years," Pratt told reporters recently at Toyota's Tokyo office of the timeframe seen for the investment. Cont'd...

Keith Naughton for Bloomberg Technology: Brian Lesko and Dan Sherman hate the idea of driverless cars, but for very different reasons. Lesko, 46, a business-development executive in Atlanta, doesn’t trust a robot to keep him out of harm’s way. “It scares the bejeebers out of me,” he says.
Sherman, 21, a mechanical-engineering student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, trusts the technology and sees these vehicles eventually taking over the road. But he dreads the change because his passion is working on cars to make them faster.
“It’s something I’ve loved to do my entire life and it’s kind of on its way out,” he says. “That’s the sad truth.”
The driverless revolution is racing forward, as inventors overcome technical challenges such as navigating at night and regulators craft new rules. Yet the rush to robot cars faces a big roadblock: People aren’t ready to give up the wheel. Recent surveys by J.D. Power, consulting company EY, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, Canadian Automobile Association, researcher Kelley Blue Book and auto supplier Robert Bosch LLC all show that half to three-quarters of respondents don’t want anything to do with these models. Cont'd...

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